We have cabinets and water!!!

We have cabinets!! and I have photos! how wonderful is that?! My folks came up this weekend to help us. Mom to help me unpack boxes into the cabinets and dad to help W2 plumb water to the kitchen sink. 16 hours and $400 later we have water. I nearly pee'd my pants I was so excited to be able to do dishes, on the first floor.

For any and all out there with plumbing in your future...pex pipe and sharkbites are your best friend. Let me preface this by saying that nothing about plumbing is cheap. Copper is astronomically expensive. Pex had been cheap but the tool required to use it was $400, so therefore expensive. But since the creation of sharkbites, the pex pipe is totally do-able. My father and W2 should be hired to do commercials for this new wonder product. They are so impressed and so excited. My father kept saying things like "watch me sweat this joint...(slides the piece on)...I'm done." All of this while looking at my mother and I, who have no idea what it means to sweat a joint, expecting our awe and excitement. We tried our best, and were certainly thrilled with their enthusiasm and joy. But I don't think you can truly appreciate the ease of the sharkbite if you have nothing to compare it to.

Mom and Dad left last night while I was happily washing every dish we own in my sink, in my kitchen, with running water. Thanks to all of their help, I am four boxes and one stack of drawers away from having a dining room, which would mean the whole downstairs is livable and useable. Can you imagine?! It's nearly too much to grasp.

For now, I find myself gazing into the dining room in awe of how big it is! I am hoping we will be able to have a table before too long. I cleared off the tops of all four pieces of furniture and was able to dust them yesterday. Another absolutely amazing thing for me. So soon, very soon it will meet it's destiny as a viable dining room vs what it has been, a storage facility.

Update

Since I last wrote a ton of stuff has happened.
1. We bought the kitchen floor
we had planned to install it until we learned that you had to install the cabinets before the floor.
2. We called for cabinet installation
3. The cabinets are being installed today
4. W2 and his dad worked on the bump out window
5. Rigger from MA was here to help for the weekend. He and W2 worked on wiring in our bedrooom
6. I unpacked all the cabinets to ensure nothing was defective or damaged with the help of w2's mom
7. I worked on scraping the kitchen floor free of the laminate goo and paper that is left over
8. I worked on scraping the floor some more
9. and some more!

On Friday the Canadian Diva arrived for a wine sodden visit that was well needed and truly treasured! On Sunday I recieved a call from the Breeze in SF and learned she is coming for a visit the end of the month! I am so very excited, I cannot even tell you! To have one on one time with one of the girls is a gift in and of itself, but to be able to share my home is precious.

I will look forward to her coming and being able to see my new kitchen!! Can you believe it? I'm gonna have a kitchen! Of course W2 tells me last night I still won't have water in the sink until he and my dad dig the trench that needs to be dug out to the drywell. My head almost popped off. Why haven't we thought about this trench in all of the months we haven't had any water? I realize it was winter and digging wasn't possible, but come on! I just feel like I'm left out of the loop and when W2 shares things (like this) it feels like a road block. When I know damn well it isn't, but because it's the first I'm hearing about it, it's frustrating!

But for now, I'll focus on the fact that my cabinets are being installed today.

Yippee!

Flooring

We've reached the stage of needing to choose and install the floor in the kitchen. Sheerah finished the taping, priming and painting yesterday. W2 and I had picked out a cheap vinyl sheet flooring last Saturday and set up a measure for estimate for yesterday. I left work in order to meet the contractor and got there 2 minutes prior to the scheduled appointment.

He had already been to the house, measured the floor and left.

I was PISSED!!

I needed to talk to him about the condition of the floor. How much of the old adhesive did we need to get off in order to avoid having to put down subflooring? If it needed subfloor, could we get an estimate with and without that price? What leveling needed to be accomplished prior to the installation? and what not. None of this is crucial, if he had been there for me to have the conversation with him. But he was not.

The salesman that we had worked with last weekend called today with the quote. It was $898.00. I was not impressed, at all. The flooring itself is only $297.00. We had chosen it for the inexpensive nature of it. The design was palatable, but nothing to write home about. The goal is to get a floor down. A floor that will last the five years we intend to use the kitchen as it will be when we are done with this phase. We will eventually tile the floor, when we reclaim the addition. But for now, cheap was key. This quote was not cheap. Or certainly not in the category we consider cheap.

While at the store the display had fallen apart when I moved a sample. Crashing into my arm, leaving two cuts, a scrape, bruise and another bruise on my calf where it hit on it's way to the floor. The salesman neither apologized nor did anything to rectify the situation so know one else was hurt. I was not impressed.

I called the manager today to let him know how unimpressed I was with the salesman and the complete and utter lack of professionalism and courtesy of the estimator. I was offered all kinds of apologies and discounts. None of which mattered. We won't be getting our floor from that establishment. Which really and truly bums me out because they had beautiful stuff and I had envisioned my next kitchen already from product on display there.

Oh well.

We'll continue to shop.

Tom gets it done!!

The siding is done, done, done!!!

I am so excited! The house looks amazing. W2 and his dad will finish the bump out window off the dining room this Sunday and we will be done. Completely.

Sheerah will be done with the taping and painting in the kitchen tomorrow. The installer for the kitchen floor will come out tomorrow to measure. We'll be able to order the floor and set up the installation for that and then...

I can finally have my cabinets installed.

wooohooo!!!

The siding is so close to done it's painful

Hansen Construction has been absolutely amazing. Anyone in the VT, MA, NY corner of the world looking for contractors, this is your guy. He's picked up where the other jerk left off and brought the job in on time at the projected cost. What a novel concept!

W2 and I were both there last Thursday to see the last piece go up on the back of the house, 40 ft off the ground. Tom had borrowed/rented a man lift from the guy down the road in order to do the peak. It was rather impressive.

Sheerah is cruising on the interior stuff. I believe she was actually priming the kitchen this afternoon. She had repaired the huge crack between the sheet rock and ceiling in the blue bedroom and was planning on touching that up as well. I should be able to vacuum and dust and put that room to rights in preparation for our visit from the Canadian Diva this weekend!

We may have a household with Rigger coming back to help on Saturday and Sunday. I should really try to clear some space in the officery in the event we do have more than one houseguest.

We have finally decided on the five year plan for the kitchen. We will create the apartment for now, so we have the income. At the end of five years (ish), we will reclaim the entire first floor, expanding the kitchen to include a sitting room or conversation area that leads out onto the deck. This will allow us the additional income for childrearing, when we have a child, and allow us to have a project for the future.

We picked out the five year floor for the kitchen and I have someone coming out on Wednesday to measure and quote the install. Sheerah will be done by then, so then it will only be a matter of getting a date for the floor installation and then I can call my cabinet installers!!! And then I CAN HAVE A KITCHEN!!!!! I could pee I'm so excited.

It just keeps getting better

So our contractor, JTP Construction, was arrested this morning, or that's the word anyway. Tom of Hansen Construction called me at 1pm to let me know that he had heard from Jay at 8:30 this morning. Mind you, Jay was supposed to be at my house at 8 a.m.. But anyway, he calls Tom to tell him the folks from his other job are pressing charges against him and he needs to go to the police station to straighten things out. He'll be out as soon as it's all squared away. He then calls Tom at 11:30 to tell him he and two other guys are on their way out to my house. Tom called me at 1:00 to let me know they weren't there yet and he'd had it. He would finish the house but anything from that point forward would be done between us and him, leaving Jay out. While we're on the phone Jay calls. It turns out, it's one of Jay's guys telling Tom Jay had been arrested and he was on his way to bail him out. Whether or not this is true is irrevelant. The guy is a total bullshit artist and we fell for it. Fortunately he doesn't have any of our money. We will pay Tom of Hansen Construction to finish our house. He is bringing 4 more guys out tomorrow so he'll have 6 guys there to finish the job.

Ren, of Bison Contracting, will be at the house taping the kitchen and sealing the heinous gap between the wall and ceiling in the spare bedroom tomorrow. So the house will be a hive of activity. I am tickled to have her working on the house and anxious to see the rapid progress she has assured me of.

So now I find myself in the situation of having to fire the first contractor. Thank god the guy I work with is a legal genius and knows all of the ins and outs of the law. So I've typed a lovely letter of termination giving him 24 hours to fix his misdeeds and at the end of that I will terminate the contract. I fear getting dinged to pay two contractors, but guy I work with tells me the two letters make it legal and he won't be able to claim any $.

We'll see.

The contractor our contractor subcontracted is back

Our contractor sucks. I have stated this several times, in several ways. But the guy he subbed us out to was great. Unfortunately, he only subbed it out for two weeks. Two weeks was up and Tom left. And Jay didn't come. It's been two weeks since Tom left and only 12 feet of progress has been accomplished. Yesterday I very calmly told Jay that I was done. That I was not going to be patient anymore. That he had better get his ass to my house and finish my siding pronto. I made it clear that I did not care what else was on his plate, that he now needed to deal with me. He stuttered, made excuses, apologized and then let me know he was bringing Tom back on the job.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!!!! That was the best news I could have heard.

So I spoke with Tom last night and several times today and my house should be done by tomorrow. Phew! Then we can have the inspector out and get a draw on the rehab loan.

Oh, and speaking of the loan. My mother in law had the audacity to say to me on Friday that she wished we hadn't gotten the extension that way my Father in law would be off the hook.

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT SHIT???!!! HOW SELFISH IS THAT?

It's not like he's done much up to this point, why would it matter. and can you imagine saying that out loud to someone?! The loan is $25k, it's the difference between us finishing this project or living in a construction zone for a very, very long time. And W2's mother, his very own mother, is wishing we didn't get it.

I am in awe.